


A Fate Elsewhere

by Golbez



Category: Last Word (Video Game)
Genre: Class Differences, Love Confessions, M/M, Master & Servant, On the Run, POV Third Person, Plans For The Future, Post-Canon, Spoilers, Very Rambly, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000, tired boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 11:34:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17724407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Golbez/pseuds/Golbez
Summary: "What-ifs" and "my dears" on a nighttime train ride to the border.





	A Fate Elsewhere

The scenery sped past, as gray and dark as the mood in their compartment. The only consistent noises were the roaring, rattling of the train as it tore through the rainy St. Lauden countryside. On occasion some distant, other passenger would cough, but gone with the sunlight was the muffled murmur of discourse that had run through the train car throughout the day. 

The entire situation still seeemed surreal.

William Banter was not one to lament and linger on past events for overlong, but it seemed all he could do that night, sitting across from the slumbering Professor Chatters in their little train compartment. Not a day ago they'd been preparing to celebrate the fruition of a plan years in the making, and now, instead, here they were, on the run from the military and escaping across the border for fear of their lives.

Not for the first time, he envied Chatters' ability to fall deep into sleep at will. It had been of great use to him through their adventures in the tropics and the many exotic locales they'd visited together, but tonight, in particular, it served as a form of escape from the troubles weighing on them both.

Of course, it wouldn't be as simple for Will. He fidgeted, wringing his hands out of restlessness. There was always much to do around Sommerhaus. Floors to sweep, books to put away, trinkets to tidy, painting frames to dust, wine to sample, experiments to install, mystical items to find. Even before Chatters had claimed it, there were children to watch and guests to entertain. All activities beyond his reach right now. Certainly madness would follow the sheer boredom of riding a train with an already sleeping partner.

He sighed and scratched the growing itch under his collar. He'd grown used to the finer fabric servanthood had afforded him. His clothes hadn't been silk, but they had been much kinder to his skin than the cheap, rougher coats he and Chatters had hurriedly purchased from some store for the houseless.

They were a drab black, suitable only for those who had no colors to wear. It had been his idea to disguise themselves as houseless, and despite the protests from his traveling companion, it had worked so far in keeping them safe and unnoticed. The ticketers and train attendants had watched them with disdain, and the colorful nobles they'd boarded the train with had given them wide berths. 

Will had no doubts the General had issued orders for the arrest of a gentleman in orange and his servant in brown. Even letting Chatters change into his original colors would've been risky. Perhaps he was a fool to assume that was the extent of the General's description of them, but somehow he could not see St. Lauden's forces looking past the color of their clothes.

He wondered if he might have ever worn Gawship House's blue, if everything had gone right instead. If the Last Word had fallen into their hands instead, and then they'd celebrated instead, and had too much wine, and the Professor would kiss him and finally, Heavens, finally ask—

Such dwelling on "what-ifs" were below him.

He set his gaze on their suitcases, shoved under Chatters' seat with a hastily packed selection of oranges—and blues—and browns enclosed within. Their papers were somewhere in there and he would have to dig them out soon, before they crossed the border. Those flimsy certificates of their identity would serve them for as long as the General searched for them within the border rather than without, and Will had left enough breadcrumbs for her to believe they would never dare think of fleeing beyond the border.

Beyond the border, where St. Lauden's obsession with houses and discourse didn't matter. Where they could wear...whatever they wanted, do whatever they wanted, be whomever they wanted.

Will took a deep breath and stood, quite suddenly needing some air.

He slipped out their door, shutting it behind him and swiftly finding for himself a window to open and lean against along the corridor. The cool night wind filled his lungs as it whipped past.

They will need new names, new identities. New papers. New clothes! He'll take care of it all and the professor needn't worry. They could become, with the right papers, anything. Stay as master and servant, he wouldn't mind, but in theory they could be brothers or a professor and his assistant or even…lovers.

He'd never been the particularly romantic sort. The painting had been the grandest gesture he'd ever mustered, and all that had become was a betrayal of trust and a hindrance to their goal. That, then, seemed the extent of whatever flittering romance existed between him and Chatters.

"William?"

He straightened his posture, stepping away from the window and turning to face Chatters. The professor was half out their compartment, hand on the doorframe and watching him with half-lidded eyes.

"Did I wake you with the door?" asked Will, noting for the umpteenth time how the black coat did not serve the professor well.

Chatters smiled, shifting his weight and shaking his head. "Hardly. I suspect my subconscious sensed your absence. What are you doing out here in the cold, my dear William?"

"Hm, I've been contemplating our next course of action.” How unused he remained to the tingling of his skin, the fluttering in his chest, when addressed that way. “When we arrive in Paris, the possibilities will be endless.”

"Will they?"

The question quashed the tingling and fluttering, and Will could only pause to stare back at Chatters, discomfort growing at the way he was frowning at him. "Why would they not? We can change our names, change who we are, find new lives—"

"And you could have done that in St. Lauden," said the professor, in as mild a tone as any gentleman could use, but Will could hear the slightest of an edge nestling behind the words. "Why run with me when you could have stayed instead? Give yourself a new name, slip into another house. Anywhere between here and Sommerhaus, you could have helped yourself to a comfortable new life, yet here you are pondering our future instead.”

The professor, from their first meeting in Mrs. Saymore’s study to standing in front of him in the corridor of a train and on the run from their homeland’s military, never failed to render him speechless.

"My dear professor," he said with a sigh, "The thought of abandoning you never once occurred to me."

"You would be safe," said Chatters, shoulders tense, brow furrowed. Will could see the thin, cream fabric of his glove grow taut over his knuckles as his grip on the doorframe tightened. "The train stops at the border, there's still time for you to go."

"Is that what you want me to do? To go back?" For someone so brilliant, the professor could be so daft. Will strode close, meeting his gaze as firm as he might shake a hand. He stopped inches away, a distance that would've been a little too close were they in polite company at present. "The only place I intend to be is by your side."

It might have been a trick of the light, an interplay of colors cast by the dimmed lamps mounted on the strips of wall between compartments, but Will swore the professor's cheeks took on a pinkish tint.

"William," said the professor. He coughed, a familiar tactic of polite discomfort, and his gaze dropped, most unusually, away from Will's face. "I cannot bear the thought of the General imprisoning you should they catch up to us. You must guarantee your freedom while you still can."

"Spoken like a true gentleman born of a noble house."

The professor's gaze snapped back up to meet his, and here, Will could see the twitching of his mustache, the rising of light brown hackles, the squaring of shoulders.

"I do not see what the circumstances of our births have to do with this." Carefully constructed and carefully chosen words. The professor could never give up his lifelong training and practice in verbal sparring.

Will drew in a breath, keeping as calm as he always might, held eye contact, and said, "Only a gentleman would believe servanthood a greater freedom for me than my following the man I love."

And silence fell. He stepped back, letting the words settle between them, words he never could have mustered before all this, before the realization that they would have their freedoms soon. Freedom in their future, freedom to love and speak, freedoms once robbed from him by birth. So they were to be powerless, without the Mouth or the stone, but even the professor was sure to see they didn't need either anymore. Will dared to hope, watching Chatters shakily breathe in and let go of the frame, that no discourse would be necessary.

"...you give me much to think about, dear William."

There came a tightening in his chest. What had he expected from a gentleman so entrenched in civil verbosity? Yet, the way the professor's lips quirked into a smile, the way the light played about and deepened that pink tint, the way he reached up to loosen the collar of his fashionless coat with a soft cough—

"Nothing _bad_ , I might hope," said Will.

"Nothing bad," agreed Chatters.

Giddiness and elation burst through him, accompanying a swelling in his heart. Will inclined his head toward the compartment interior with a smile slowly splitting across his face.

"After you, sir," he said, and what he received was an amused chuckle.

"It would be my pleasure," replied Chatters, stepping back into the compartment.

Will took a moment to shut the window, the blur of scenery a comfort now and less a signal of failure. A herald, instead, of a journey to the border, then beyond, to Paris, and to adventures galore. Perhaps even westward aboard a ship, or eastward on another train, toward some place they could sell the sciences of discourse. Then they will have their choices in colors and names and anything they so wanted, but that was for later, after he's taken out the papers and repacked their belongings much more neatly, after they've stolen a kiss under a dying lamp by a river (the professor will taste of Brittany Rose by then), after they've shed the black coats and donned muted, matching blues, after they've sat themselves in a café and talked out, quietly, what this delightful _thing_ between them meant to either of them.

For now, from here to Paris, he'll contemplate their next course of action some more. For now, he'll step back into their compartment and shut the door and, without a moment's hesitation, sit down beside his beloved professor.

If Chatters had any objection to Will resting against him so he could finally shut his eyes for the night, he did not attempt to voice it.

**Author's Note:**

> I started this with the intention of Will confessing about the painting, but things went a more direct route and I'm still kinda happy about it.
> 
> Yes, the game has definitely consumed me creatively.


End file.
